MARINO VOTES FOR CUT, CAP, AND BALANCE ACT

WASHINGTON -- U.S. Rep. Tom Marino, PA-10, voted in favor of The Cut, Cap, and Balance Act Tuesday night and said he holds out hope that Senate Democrats will “do what the American people want.”

House passage of HR 2560 sends the measure to the Senate and to what critics are calling a likely death.
Marino discounted criticism that the move by the House is symbolic.

“I don’t vote symbolic,” he said. “This is what the American people want. They want us to cut spending and cap our expenditures, just like they are forced to do on a daily basis.

“They want us to only spend what we take in and since we haven’t been able to do that for decades, this bill includes a balanced budget requirement,” Marino said.

HR2560 places a statutory cap on federal spending and requires the passage of a balanced budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution before increasing the nation’s debt ceiling.

The Cut, Cap, and Balance Act excludes national defense from spending caps – a safeguard that will allow the United States to maintain a trained and ready force and prepare for the future.

On Tuesday morning, Marino joined 21 freshman colleagues for an impromptu press conference in front of the White House as President Obama met inside with congressional Republican leaders.

The 22 representatives carried copies of a letter the legislators sent to President Obama demanding a written proposal that outlines his plan to raise the debt ceiling.

Members of the group were united in their stance that they will not agree to any debt ceiling proposal unless it includes detailed spending cuts and timelines.

In his address to the group that gathered around the first-term lawmakers, Marino pointed out the inaction by the previous Congress and the Obama administration to address the growing national debt and deficit.

He also assured senior citizens and members of the military that they will receive their August checks.

“The Treasury Secretary decides what bills are paid, at the direction of the president,” Marino said. “There is no reason that the Social Security checks will not go out and that the military will not get paid. I promise seniors and our military families that they will receive their checks on time and I challenge the president to step up and act like a leader.”

130 Republicans Who Are in Congress Today Voted to Hike the Debt Ceiling Under Bush Without Hostage Threats
Wednesday 20 July 2011

by: Zaid Jilani, ThinkProgress | Op-Ed

White House and congressional negotiators are currently in the process of striking a deficit reduction deal, as most Republicans in Congress are refusing to raise the federal debt ceiling without deep cuts to public investments and social insurance programs like Social Security and Medicare. By doing so, these Republicans are essentially holding the country hostage, threatening the United States with default unless Democrats agree to these cuts.

Yet these Republicans were not always demanding hostages in exchange for allowing the country to pay its own bills. In November of 2004, Congress voted in both the House and Senate to hike the US debt limit by $800 billion, which raised the total ceiling to $8.1 trillion.

A ThinkProgress review of the votes in both the House and Senate finds that a whopping 130 congressional Republicans voted to hike the debt ceiling that November that remain in the US Congress today (either in their same seats or by coming to the Senate). These members of Congress did not demand draconian cuts in public investment that would've driven up unemployment and threatened the economy in return.